Why Greece Loves the US Debt Ceiling Fight ♯

Greece used to be a focal point in the debate on the global economy but in the last couple of week the attention has been dwarfed by the debate on the US debt ceiling.

It will be interesting to see if the attention returns to Greece once the US gets the debt ceiling sorted.

Measuring Brand Profiles and Personalities ♯

Having a great brand is something most businesses aspire to. A business or product with a better brand can command a higher price for comparable products. Organisations spend a lot of resources trying to shape their overall brand,  products and services. The stakes are very high because of the sheer size of the investments necessary to develop the right brand. 

To improve their ability to manage their brand initiatives and thereby secure a greater ROI on these initiatives, most organisations conduct surveys to understand how customers feel about their brands. These surveys are often conducted every six-12 months. However, in today’s fast moving world this is clearly too infrequent to support an increasing number of tactical decisions. 

Being able to quickly understand the effects of an organisation’s marketing communications (and those of their competitors) is essential. By having a constant feedback loop from the market place marketers can constantly understand which initiatives they might want to amplify and which they might want to adjust or scale back. 

At Onalytica we are putting enterprise listening and analytics solutions in place for an increasing number of organisations. Several of these solutions include the ability to constantly measure the brand profile of the organisations as well as understand what is driving the brand in the right direction. 

One of the models we use to analyse brands describes the brand in relation to a number of different personality traits. These traits are defined as “pillars”.

These pillars form part of “The Davies Model”, which can be found in the great book on corporate reputation; “Corporate Reputation and Competitiveness” by Professor G. Davies et al. (Rudledge, 2003).

The pillars of the standard Davies model are shown below:

Naturally, the pillars and the traits can vary according to the brand and our solution allows full flexibility on how many pillars can be used and the descriptive words that go into each pillar.

I had a look at some brands and how they are discussed in the context of mobile phones, below, is what the brand profiles look like.

First up is Blackberry. For this example, the original pillars taken from the Davies model, shown above, have been used. Notice how the brand changed slightly from Q1 to Q2 of 2011: Chic, Enterprise and Informality were down – Machismo was up:

Then I took Motorola. Motorola’s brand also changed during the first half of 2011:

Enterprise and Chic were also down, but Machismo and Competence in particular were up.

The general model of using pillars and traits can be configured to compare brands according to the dimensions that are deemed important to those brands.

The next graph shows how three mobile phones compare on a number of features such as camera, design and security:

Notice the substantial differences between the three phones that largely target the same consumer segment. Also notice how the Motorola Pro scores so much higher than its competitors on “security”. The Motorola Pro has extra strong encryption and a number of new security features that mean the phone can be controlled and wiped clean, should the need arise. These are features that Blackberry used to be more associated with, but the current positive differentiators for Blackberry Bold 9900 seem to be apps/applications and design. 

Battery life and camera are key differentiators for the Nokia E6. Talk time for this particular model is said to be 14.8 hours, with 31 days standby. The phone has an 8-megapixel camera with full-focus and support for HD video recording.

It is clear to see how maintaining an up-to-date understanding of a brand’s profile can help in the management of that profile. Combining this with our solution’s ability to interactively run root-cause-analysis on changes, marketers can quickly see what is driving their brands in the direction they want and thus which of their marcomms initiatives they might consider increasing.

Enhancing Marketing Effectiveness ♯

With the aim of improving cancer outcomes, the Government has commissioned M&C Saatchi to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of bowel cancer as well as encouraging the public to go for screening. A seven-week pilot campaign was launched at the end of January this year in two southern regions of the UK, which focused on awareness of bowel cancer with the key message: Be Clear on Cancer.

We have been tracking the debate on Cancer in the UK since September 2010 and wanted to measure the initial effectiveness of this first campaign. If the campaign has been successful we would expect to see an increase in debate in relation to the overall cancer debate.

Overall cancer debate has been more elevated this year compared to the last four months of 2010; showing overall effectiveness of the campaign. The weekly trend of debate during the pilot campaign showed a steady and sharp increase in discussion between the second and fifth weeks followed by a steep decline in debate the following week, the final week of the campaign. Increased levels of discussion during the middle of the campaign were not sustained towards the end or just after the end of the campaign itself.

Taking a monthly view of the data, February marked the highest month of bowel cancer debate since tracking began and although discussion dipped in March, April marked a new high – indicating the longer term effects of the campaign.

Amplifying the Message
We can already see that the campaign has had a positive effect on the level of bowel cancer discussion, however, in order to amplify this effect what can M&C Saatchi do?

One of the first steps could be to identify what is currently driving the debate on cancer and more specifically on bowel cancer. By tapping into the current debate drivers in the discussion, your message can form part of the most current topic of interest, which will boost visibility and therefore awareness. Current topics driving the bowel cancer debate are targeted therapy, cancer research and faulty gene. An initial strategy using a combination focused on using the hot topics of the moment and discussing them, along with the key marketing messages, on identified influencer sites can only help form part of a recipe for success.

If you would like more information on how Onalytica can help you find out what is driving the debate in your industry, or who the key influencers are for your brand, product or service please feel free to contact me: sophie.hill@onalytica.com.

Who is Influential in the Debate on the Royal Wedding This Week? ♯

At the end of March we began analysing the key influencers in the debate on the Royal Wedding. Now we are going to look at how those stakeholders have changed as we approach the big event.

Influence is dynamic, in that a stakeholder can become more or less influential on a topic over time.  So who are the current top 20 most influential websites in the debate on the Royal Wedding?

Table 1: Top 20 Influential Stakeholders in the Debate on the Royal Wedding

We saw the Official Royal Wedding Website climb to the top of the chart in March, surpassing national online news media from the UK, the US and Australia. Now we have seen it fall to rank 6th, as it became less influential in the debate and was overtaken by news media outlets from the UK and the US.

Four stakeholders fell out of the top 20 between the 29th March and the 19th April 2011 including; ABC News, Celebuzz!, TMZ - Celebrity Gossip and Fox News.

As we come closer to the date of the wedding, the top 20 is becoming more and more dominated by online news media outlets as stakeholders dedicated to the Royal Wedding and celebrity gossip sites, such as the Official Royal Wedding Website and Celebuzz, are becoming less influential.

Report compiled during the period 1st October 2010 – 19th April 2011. Please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Who is Influential in the Debate on the Royal Wedding? ♯

The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is a very topical subject at the moment with just four weeks to go until the big day. We began tracking the debate on the Royal Wedding around the time of the couple’s official announcement of their engagement in November 2010. Just look how the volume of debate has increased so dramatically between December and March:

Figure 1: Monthly Buzz Trend for Mentions of the Royal Wedding

 
Not only are we interested in the discussion of the Royal Wedding, but we are interested in who is discussing the Royal Wedding and just how influential those voices are.
Before revealing some of the most influential voices in the debate I want to outline what I mean when I say influence and how this can be measured.

What is influence?
Influence, is the capacity of a publication, an organisation or an individual to impact the viewpoints, actions or opinions of others over whom they do not hold power.

This shouldn’t be confused with popularity. Popularity is about how many listen to you whereas influence is more about who listens to you.
This can be seen in the graphics below:

Figure 2: Popularity vs. Influence

Figure 3: Focus on Popularity

Figure 4: Focus on Influence

But what do all these links mean without context? 

Influence is topical: Those who have influence in the debate on cat-food may not have the same influence on energy supply.

We put a key focus on defining the appropriate context in order to then measure the influence of the stakeholders contributing to the online debate within that context.

So how is influence measured?

Firstly, let’s have a think about why we need to measure influence, rather than go with our own impressions or gut feel: The identification of influencers based on measurement is important as we (as humans) tend to overrate the importance of those we hear about more often and similar underrate the importance of those we hear about less (or never).

So now on to measurement; in order to measure influence, we need to take indirect influence into account.

For more than three decades academics have used something called “citation analysis” to measure the influence of academic journals, researchers and universities. In academic articles, writers cite the works of other academics. They do that for several reasons, but mainly because they believe that those they cite are relevant to the context. They reference other publications that are relevant to their arguments and to the context. In doing so they reveal which other publications have influenced them.

In citation analysis these citations from one journal to another are regarded as links. These links are extracted and transformed into a huge system of equations. When solved the result is a relative measure of influence.

This way of measuring influence was developed by Russia-born American, Wassily Leontief. He developed something called input/output analysis to measure how sectors of the economy influence each other.

Wassily Leontief was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing input/output-analysis and thereby solving the illusive problems of “circular influence”.
We use this method to measure the influence of websites based on which websites link to them, and in turn, which websites link to those websites and so on.

So here it is what you’ve all be waiting for: We have used this measure to find the top 20 most influential websites in the global English debate on the Royal Wedding:

Table 1: Top 20 Influential Stakeholders in the Debate on the Royal Wedding

We have recently seen The Official Royal Wedding Website climb to the top of the chart, surpassing national news media from the UK, the US and Australia. We will be keeping an eye on the top 20 over the next four weeks to see what kind of movement occurs.

Report compiled during the period 1st October 2010 – 29th March 2011. Please email me (sophie.hill@onalytica.com) if you would like further information on findings presented in this blog post.

Mobile World Congress - The Four Sides to Success ♯

Following on from our analysis of the global English debate of Mobile World Congress, we have distilled the four key aspects which proved successful in drawing attention in the debate:

1. Timing

• Interest peaked on the first day of the event and quickly tailed off in subsequent days proving that timing is essential: too early and the message becomes old news by the time the event arrives; too late and it could be side-lined as other messages have taken hold. HTC, LG and Nokia timed their announcements well, allowing them to capitalise on interest during the event.

2. Differentiation

• New technology and points of differentiation attract attention. LG demonstrated this point with the 3D technology incorporated in the Optimus 3D and Optimus Tab. HTC also benefitted from differentiation in driving interest in the Flyer, which was the only tablet to feature note-taking functionality.

3. Mystery

• Some handsets maintained interest over a sustained period of time; namely through creating a mysterious aura about the product. Samsung did this effectively with the Galaxy S II. Samsung spread outline images and sneaky hints of the product, but refused to reveal all until the event, which kept people wanting more.

4. Leaks

• MWC 2011 proved that the marketing efforts of the largest scale don’t necessarily guarantee a proportional slice of attention. Sony Ericsson suffered from this; its Xperia Play had a larger share of attention before its advert was aired at prime time during the Super Bowl.
• Low-key, seemingly unofficial leaks sparked discussion and spread quickly as the audience was interested in being the first to relay the news. This technique was particularly effective in the lead up to the event.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact me; Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*This report was produced using data analysed from the period 1st Oct 2010 – 28th Feb 2011.

Mobile World Congress - Summary of Findings ♯

Our latest report covering analysis on the debate of Mobile World Congress is now available - here is a summary of the findings:

• Google was the most-discussed company and held a sizeable share of the debate in relation to MWC throughout the timeframe.  

• Samsung was the most-discussed company among influential stakeholders. The Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab were the main drivers of attention.

• HTC, LG, Sony Ericsson and Nokia all benefitted from increased attention among influential stakeholders.

• Apple’s products fared well within the handset and tablet debate as they generated the highest volumes of coverage. That said, they appeared in a high proportion of collateral mentions as they were referred to as benchmark products.

• Android dominated the phone operating system (OS) debate.

• Discussion of MWC began to build in Jan, coming to a peak on the first day of the event. There was a small dip in interest on the second day and by the third day influential stakeholders had lost a significant amount of interest in the event.

• Engadget (engadget.com) was the most influential stakeholder and held the number one spot throughout the period, while other stakeholders moved around in the ranking. The debate was dominated by technology media sites during the end of 2010 as technology and gadget enthusiasts drove the debate.  Into Jan and Feb the debate became much more mainstream as official announcements drew wider appeal.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact me; Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*This report was produced using data analysed from the period 1st Oct 2010 – 28th Feb 2011.

Mobile World Congress - Google to Tune Out iTunes with Google Music? ♯

Our latest report covering analysis on the debate of Mobile World Congress is now available - here is a summary of the findings:

• Google was the most prominent brand on the final day of MWC. Praise for Android, along with the sheer number of devices running on the OS unveiled at the show fuelled the debate. Drawing added attention, however, was Sanjay Jha’s announcement that the Motorola Xoom would launch with Google Music; reigniting discussion of Google’s iTunes rival.
• HTC continued to feature in the debate, boosted by winning the award for Device Manufacturer of the Year.
• Apple, which has largely appeared in collateral mentions in the discussion so far, came into the spotlight on the 17th Feb after winning the Best Mobile Device award for its iPhone 4.
• Discussion of RIM increased, driven by interest in new apps developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) for the BlackBerry PlayBook. News that future BlackBerry handsets would come equipped with near field communication (NFC) technology continued to feature in RIM’s discussion.
• The volume of MWC debate remained on a downward trend into the fourth, and final, day of the event.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact me; Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*This report was produced using data analysed from the period 27th Sep 2010 – 17th Feb 2011.

Mobile World Congress - Nokia Waiting to Get Tropical with 'Mango'? ♯

Our latest report covering analysis on the debate of Mobile World Congress is now available - here is a summary of the findings:

• HTC’s new Facebook-integrated handsets have continued to draw interest, boosted by talk that the ChaCha will be supplied by Three and Orange in the UK.
• Nokia built on its momentum in the debate as commentators were interested in when the new Windows Phone handsets would launch. Speculation spread that Nokia was waiting for Microsoft’s next generation, ‘Mango’, Windows Phone update which is widely expected to arrive later in the year.
• Aaron Woodman, Director of Microsoft’s mobile communication business, was interviewed by Engadget where he discussed the implications of the Nokia/Microsoft partnership for other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) which spread online; drawing attention to both companies.
• News that tablets and handsets, fitted with Nvidia’s quad-core processors could be arriving to market as soon as August this year was prominent on the 16th Feb.
• The volume of MWC debate dropped significantly on the third day of the event.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact me; Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*This report was produced using data analysed from the period 27th Sep 2010 – 16th Feb 2011.

Mobile World Congress - Will HTC's Flyer Fly High? ♯

Our latest report covering analysis on the debate of Mobile World Congress is now available - here is a summary of the findings:

• HTC drew attention away from Microsoft on the 15th Feb with its Flyer tablet and range of handsets including the Salsa and ChaCha with Facebook buttons.
  • Apprehension that the price tag may price the Flyer out of the market along with criticism of the lack of palm rejection technology for the tablet’s note-taking functionality drove negative comments. 
• Google followed HTC in prominence driven by mentions of Android and Eric Schmidt.
  • Key for Android was Movie Studio, but there was a strong feeling that this was not a ‘killer’ tablet app and too similar to Apple’s iMovie.
  • Eric Schmidt’s announcement that Google ‘certainly tried’ to encourage Nokia to adopt Android over Windows Phone was widely discussed online.
• Nokia continued to feature strongly in the debate on the back of interest in its decision to partner with Microsoft. Peter Chou was surprisingly upbeat about the move. Commentators felt he would soon change his tune once Nokia’s sales began to eat into HTC’s market share.
• The volume of MWC debate dropped by 14% on the second day of the event.

As before, if you would like to receive a copy of this report, please contact me; Sophie Hill [sophie.hill@onalytica.com]. If you have a general interest in the event and analysis relating to it, or want to know how we help companies interpret and understand the discussion around industries, brands, themes and issues then please contact us on 0207 407 7642. You can also subscribe to this RSS feed where we will be posting some of the findings.

*This report was produced using data analysed from the period 27th Sep 2010 – 15th Feb 2011.